Researchers at Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center have developed an artificial intelligence program that they hope will one day lead to quicker treatment for patients with the most critical of brain conditions.

JoAnne Viviano The Columbus Dispatch @JoAnneViviano

Researchers at Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center have developed an artificial intelligence program that they hope will one day lead to quicker treatment for patients with the most critical of brain conditions.

The program successfully trained computers to read CT scans of the brain and, within seconds, identify patients that need immediate attention, said Dr. Luciano Prevedello, a radiologist who led the research.

For the radiologists who study the scans to make diagnoses, the project has the potential to prioritize orders that doctors mark “stat” — a request that images be read as soon as possible because a patient’s condition could be critical.

Prevedello said research shows that about 40 percent of CT scans ordered in large academic practices like Ohio State's carry the stat designation.

“When you have so many studies (of scans) ordered as ‘stat’ you need a way to sort through those cases right away,” he said.

The team used 2,583 images pulled from the scans of 246 patients to create two algorithms, or sets of rules, for computers to follow to interpret the scans, according to a study reported in December in the journal Radiology.

The patients either had scans in which no critical issues were discovered or suffered from one of four conditions: bleeding in the brain; a brain tumor; water in the brain; or ischemic stroke, caused by lack of blood to the brain.

The algorithms were tested using 100 patient scans and rated on how well they distinguished between non-critical and critical scans.

With one being perfect, the first algorithm level achieved a 0.91 in recognizing bleeding, water and tumors in the brain, considered "high performance level" by the researchers. The second achieved a 0.81 in recognizing stroke, considered "reasonable" performance and similar to reported performance in humans.

The research is novel and commendable, said Dr. Keith Dreyer, a Harvard Medical School associate professor who serves as chief data-science officer at the Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women's Hospital and at a Boston-based health-care network of which the hospitals are a part.

Artificial intelligence is coming to medicine, and is very amenable to the field of radiology because much of the artificial intelligence being discovered today is based on images, Dreyer said. But the technology still has a long way to go before it becomes commonplace in the heavily regulated medical field.

Dreyer said the American College of Radiology, where he is a chief science officer, of the Data Science Institute is working with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to create safety and efficacy standards and to determine ways to monitor the success of artificial intelligence programs on an ongoing basis.

The Ohio State team foresees imaging systems that could run algorithms while a patient is being scanned that would notify a radiologist of findings that need immediate review.

Such quick action can make a huge difference, Prevedello said, especially for ischemic stroke, which can kill 1.9 million neurons every minute it is left untreated.

The technology, however, is not without its limitations, Dreyer said. For example, using a finite data set may not teach a computer all of the scenarios found on the billions of scans performed around the world.

Prevedello said more research needs to be done; he hopes to next test the algorithms in a clinical trial.

Both he and Dreyer anticipate those who use artificial-intelligence technology will outperform those who don't. But they don't see radiologists being replaced.

While artificial intelligence may have the advantages of being consistent and not getting tired like humans, it still isn’t 100 percent accurate, Prevedello said. “Completely automating things may not give us that safety net that is so important in medicine,” he said.

So far, the field has embraced the science, Dreyer said.

"Radiologists see this as a tool that can be used for the good of our patients. In no way are we worried about this taking our jobs away," he said. "They look at this and instead say this can change our field just as CT scans did or MRIs."

JoAnne Viviano is a staff writer for The Columbus Dispatch.

Never miss a story

Choose the plan that's right for you.
Digital access or digital and print delivery.

Sister Publications

Original content available for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons license, except where noted.
Times Reporter ~ 629 Wabash Ave. NW New Philadelphia, OH 44663 ~ Privacy Policy ~ Terms Of Service